Active travel by built environment and lifecycle stage : case study of Osaka metropolitan area

Active travel can contribute to physical activity achieved over a day. Previous studies have examined active travel associated with trips in various western countries, but few studies have examined this question for the Asian context. Japan has high levels of cycling, walking and public transport, similar to The Netherlands. Most studies have focused either on children or on adults separately, however, having children in a household will change the travel needs and wants of that household. Thus, here a household lifecycle stage approach is applied. Further, unlike many previous studies, the active travel related to public transport is included. Lastly, further to examining whether the built environment has an influence on the accumulation of active travel minutes, a binary logistic regression examines the built environment’s influence on the World Health Organization’s recommendations of physical activity. The findings suggest that there is a clear distinction between the urbanized centers and the surrounding towns and unurbanized areas. Further, active travel related to public transport trips is larger than pure walking trips. Females and children are more likely to achieve the WHO recommendations. Finally, car ownership is a strong negative influen

A framework for post-project evaluation of multicriteria decision aiding processes from the stakeholders’ perspective : design and application

Numerous multicriteria decision aiding (MCDA) methods have been developed over the last decades and are now applied in various domains, sometimes using facilitated group workshops to create models. These models are all designed to improve decision processes. However, the lack of follow-up and post-project evaluations limit the understanding of how the participants experienced the group workshops and how the results were subsequently used within the organization. This is in contrast with the public participation research field, where a rich literature was developed for a posteriori evaluation of projects. Based on this literature, our research proposes a framework to evaluate, ex-post, MCDA projects. In order to illustrate this framework, we apply it to an MCDA project in Quebec City where a spatial decision support system to prioritize the redesign of streets as Complete Streets was built. Individual interviews were conducted with the Quebec City professionals that currently use, were leaders of the project, or have participated in the development of the decision support system. This research has identified that the need for change of practices within the workplace, communication problems, and the requirement for multidisciplinary work were at the root of the various challenges encountered during the workshops. Based on our experience, we propose some lessons learned and potential solutions that can enhance the body of literature in MCDA

International origins of walking school buses and child fatalities in Japan and Canada

The concept of a Walking School Bus (WSB) has existed in Japan for over half a century, but is a relatively new concept in Anglo-Saxon countries, tracing its origins to the early 1990s. In Anglo-Saxon countries the WSB is seen as a safe means of addressing the negative impacts of increased school trips by car. Recently in Japan, a discussion as to the value and appropriateness of the shuudantogeko (the Japanese WSB) has emerged as some suggest that it could reduce safety. This paper introduces and compares the two WSB systems, and then uses traffic fatality data from Canada and Japan to compare travel-to-school in an open choice system with a country where WSB is common practice

A review of cost–benefit analysis and multicriteria decision analysis from the perspective of sustainable transport in project evaluation

Transport decision processes have traditionally applied cost-benefit analysis (CBA) with benefits mainly relating to time savings, and costs relating to infrastructure and maintenance costs. However, a shift toward more sustainable practices was initiated over the last decades to remedy the many negative impacts of automobility. As a result, decision processes related to transport projects have become more complex due to the multidimensional aspects and to the variety of stakeholders involved, often with conflicting points of view. To support rigorous decision making, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) is, in addition to CBA, often used by governments and cities. However, there is still no consensus in the transport field regarding a preferred method that can integrate sustainability principles. This paper presents a descriptive literature review related to MCDA and CBA in the field of transport. Among the 66 considered papers, we identified the perceived strengths and weaknesses of CBA and MCDA, the different ways to combine them and the ability of each method to support sustainable transport decision processes. We further analysed the results based on four types of rationality (objectivist, conformist, adjustive and reflexive). Our results show that both methods can help improve the decision processes and that, depending on the rationality adopted, the perceived strengths and weaknesses of MCDA and CBA can vary. Nonetheless, we observe that by adopting a more global and holistic perspective and by facilitating the inclusion of a participative process, MCDA, or a combination of both methods, emerge as the more promising appraisal methods for sustainable transport

Walking to school in Scotland : do perceptions of neighbourhood quality matter?

A decrease in active travel has been observed over the past years in many Western countries including Scotland. A large part of this is likely due to the greater travel distances. However, previous research has suggested that perceptions of one's neighbourhood may also affect walking levels. If parents fear crime or traffic levels, or feel that their neighbourhood is of low quality they may not let their child walk. These perceptions are subjective and may be interlinked to each other. It is important to understand which perceptions matter more than others, in order to design the most suitable policy to promote more active travel behaviour among children. Using the Scottish Household Survey, this study investigates how or whether 48 different perceptions of neighbourhood quality or 11 reasons for having chosen their house affect children walking to school. A variable attrition method was used to reduce the number of variables for modelling. When walking distance, household characteristics, and built environment are included in a binary regression model only two perceptions were found to be significant: good local shops and slow/safe traffic. Implications of the findings are discussed

Communicating transportation carbon dioxide emissions information : does gender impact behavioral response?

General concern and knowledge on climate change have been increasingly studied over the past decades. Gender differences have been found for general environmental concern and knowledge, but mixed findings exist with respect to climate change. In transportation, research has examined potential relations between environmental attitudes and transportation behavior, with mixed findings as well. Recently, the use of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions information to influence choice has been tested with women being found more willing to pay to reduce their personal impacts, suggesting that women are either more willing to change or that their response to information on climate change is stronger. However, those studies used CO2 mass and studies that examined understanding of CO2 information as a mass have found that people struggle to understand it. If concern and knowledge about climate change differ amongst individuals, then, according to theories such as the Transtheoretical Model, the type of information used to motivate choices is likely important. Using a unique data set (n = 236) it is possible to take a first look at how gender might affect concern, knowledge, and action in terms of transportation and climate change. Further, it is also possible to examine behavioral responses to transportation climate change information. Finally, an empirical analysis is conducted of the effect of how the information is presented might differ by gender. Thus, this work aims to investigate whether gender differences might contribute to the explanation of individual behavioral responses (from concern to action) in a transportation climate change context

Children’s independent trips on weekdays and weekends : case study of Quebec city

Children’s independent mobility (CIM) on school days and on the weekend are examined in this study. Previous studies have focused primarily on weekday trips, with a vast majority only examining trips to school. However the types of trips and the available time differ between these days of the week. Weekday trips are more regular and possibly more local, whereas on the weekend, the children may have more free time (i.e. no school) to engage in activities. Parents as well (as a group) are less likely to have work obligations, and thus potentially more time on the weekend. Theoretically, each context for the weekend could facilitate more independent or active mode trips. However, this may be linked to whether destinations are local, which is linked to the built environment. Using origin-destination data (2011) for the City of Quebec, this paper will expand knowledge in the field of children’s travel by examining all trips during a weekday (n=979) and weekend (n=315) for children aged 9 to 11 across five built environment types. The findings show that weekend trips are rarely independent, and that the key explanatory factors for greater CIM are shorter distances, having an older sibling, and more urban environments. Other socio-demographic variables were not significant, or inconsistent between the two types of weekday

CO2 valence framing : is it really any different from just giving the amounts ?

Previous experiments have shown that negative valence framing in comparison to positive framing augments the perceived differences between CO2 emission amounts. This means that, in order to increase the chance that an individual will perceive a difference between two CO2 amounts, it is better to highlight the amount by which the other choice is larger. However, a number of questions remain with respect to such findings. First, those experiments did not test whether such framing results in differences as compared to just presenting the amounts. Choice experiments and travel behavior change programs often simply use the attribute values (e.g. 300 g/km versus 250 g/km), thus it is important to know whether valence framing would result in differences as compared to this valence-free or “neutral” framing. Second, some research suggests that loss-framing may be less effective in Asian as opposed to Western contexts. Further, as CO2 emissions information is relatively new, and an individual will not always be presented with a second value (i.e. no context), how might that affect responses? Thus, in this research we describe the results of an experiment with four treatments and four key measures. The four treatments being: “no context”, “neutral”, “positive-framing”, and “negative-framing”. Lastly, when attempting to motivate support or change from the general population, aggregate information rather than individual information is often used. Is it possible that such general information would influence an individual

Comparing and presenting city-level transportation CO2 emissions using GIS.

In 2011, the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) inventory of diffuse emissions became available, providing data on a range of atmospheric emissions at a 5 km resolution across Europe. The data are produced from spatially disaggregated emissions totals for countries, and must be validated before being used at a sub-national level. The UK government maintains a 1 km resolution emissions inventory based on a bottom-up methodology by which a validation is possible. The UK National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory data are used to assess at what geographic scale the new E-PRTR data might be most useful. This paper compares the two data sets and estimates city-level transportation CO2 emissions for 149 EU cities. We find that at a functional boundary level the two datasets match well